


set it free (let it go; you already know)

by trell (qunlat)



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:17:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6803806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Celty Sturluson leaves Kishitani Shinra in the dust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	set it free (let it go; you already know)

It doesn't take long once she’s made her decision. Her life is terribly small, Celty thinks distantly, small enough to fit in a box as big as a schoolbag: nothing to take with her from Shinra’s apartment save the laptop he’d given her, her horse her only other possession.

None of the accumulation of _things_ humans have, for all that she’s been here for the last twenty years; and it’s just another reminder that she _isn’t,_ hasn’t gotten more human, not really, is still caught between life and undeath without a sure place in either. 

Shinra throws a tantrum, of course, looks as lost as a child as she seals the laptop into a case made of shadows and casts one last look around the apartment. He begs her to stay like one, too, entreaties her with promises of his love and a sob-story she has no interest in hearing. Doesn't she know, after all, that he's loved her since he was ten; doesn't she understand that's why he did what he did; doesn't she appreciate all he's done—

Celty cuts him off, then, punches the reply into her phone and shoves it right in his face. `[If love means I can expect nothing but lies, I don't want it.]` He goes half cross-eyed trying to read it, and once he has he starts right up again: about how much he'd feared to lose her, about how she really doesn't need her head, anyway.

`[That isn't for you to decide]`, Celty types, and then, half-vindictive, adds her most cutting truth. `[If I had found it, I wouldn't have left you. If you had not lied, no matter what it told me, I would have stayed.]`

That strikes him dumb at last, and she leaves in that silence, walks out the door and saddles her horse—straddles her bike—directs the lift to the ground floor. He runs out into the hallway after her just as the lift door slides shut, and she doesn't think about how he must be stumbling down the stairs as the lift takes her swiftly down. Doesn't think about anything, really, only attaches the laptop in its shadowy case to her bike and gives her horse a reassuring pat, more for her sake than its. 

It's drizzling outside when the lift door opens at the ground floor, little more than a sun shower, the sunset vivid where the clouds are broken at the horizon. In the face of that blood orange splash Celty revs the engine, just once: and then she's gone, swinging into the street with a snap of momentum, leaving the apartment and Shinra and all his lies in the dust.

The world smells fresh and new in the rain.

*

She spends hours speeding through the city without thinking, pushing her horse's metal heart to the limit, the wind against her helmet the only thing she can hear. If she keeps moving she doesn't have to think about it: doesn't have to deal with the practical aftermath or the emotional fallout, doesn't have to replay the look on Shinra's face as she delivered her decision over again in her head. There's a purity to breakneck speeds that she hasn't found anywhere else, something primal and _hers,_ and she wonders sometimes if that feeling is a memory from before.

It matters to her that it might be. It matters to her that there’s memories to be found, that she used to be something other than this—more or less, she is no longer sure, but different all the same. A version of her that slotted perfectly into the world, that belonged, no matter under which rules.

Shinra hadn’t understood. Shinra had insisted that this existence—no head, no past prior to this endless search, no ground to claim as hers—was enough, and maybe more. He’d lied because he loved her, and Celty doesn’t believe in lies as a form of love, believes even less in all the rest he’d said.

She drives around the city for hours, just like that. Until the sun sets behind skyscrapers that jut like teeth into the sky; until the nighttime city glow rises from the bottom up; until even after that, when the glow dims to something more indicative of a slumber and the streetlights blink their sluggish late-night cycle. Until she’s the only one left, a shadow racing along turnpikes.

If she really is a reaper, Celty thinks, then for her the end of the world will be just like this. Alone and unchained, still moving when everyone has moved on, not a soul left to keep her company in the night in the wake of duty.

So long as she keeps moving, such a future doesn’t seem altogether sad.

*

There comes a point when she has to stop, of course. Technically speaking she doesn’t need sleep, not any more than she needs food, but in twenty years’ time she’s become accustomed to it: something picked up from humanity, after all, this comfortable repeated oblivion.

She almost follows the familiar path home to Shinra’s apartment before she remembers that home isn’t there any longer. She ends up driving circles through Ikebukuro until the sun rises again, instead, suddenly aware that she hasn’t got anywhere to go, nor even anyone to call.

Just another thing living with Shinra stole from her, she realizes: connections and backup, even something as basic as a roof over her head inaccessible without him.

She’s still mulling fruitlessly over what to do about it when she spots Shizuo smoking off an overpass.

Her steed screeches to a halt on the pavement as she pulls back on the reins—hits the brake. Shizuo looks up: he looks mildly rumpled, like he’s been in a fight today already, but his bowtie’s still straight and there’s no blood on him. Not a fight with Izaya, then, and as Shizuo turns and says, “Hey, Celty, what’re you doing out so early?” she whips out her phone to start typing.

Shizuo’s eyebrows climb his forehead over his sunglasses as she relates the story, then draw sharply down when she gets to what Shinra did. Once he’s read it all the way through the effect is immediate and transforming. Shizuo’s whole posture goes from one of mild concern to wound tight as a spring, fists clenched at his sides, and he’s damn near growling when he says, “I’m gonna kill him! How dare that fucking shitstain pull that on you, I’m gonna wring his stupid neck—”

Celty hastens to type, `[It’s okay, that’s not important!!]` and, as Shizuo takes this in and bursts out with, “He’s been fucking with you for twenty years, of course it’s important! I’m gonna fucking kill him!” follows it with, `[REALLY. IF I WANTED HIM DEAD I’D HAVE DONE IT MYSELF.]`

Shizuo’s still breathing hard, though, like he really is going to run all the way across town to Shinra’s apartment exclusively to wring his neck, and down underneath the need to stop him from probably losing his job all over again Celty finds herself gratified by his response. It’s nice to know that someone else thinks she’s in the right, that she’s not being irrational in throwing everything Shinra’s given her away over this one thing.

It’s nice to have someone so solidly in her corner, without manipulation or hidden agendas of love. 

When she’s managed to talk Shizuo down from storming off to murder Shinra, mostly by reminding him that Tom’s probably expecting him back within the hour, it occurs to her that maybe she can ask him about her current predicament, too. She hesitates, though, because maybe that’s too much, and Shizuo’s got his own problems, after all. Pauses with her hand over the keyboard as Shizuo stomps out yet another cigarette (the fourth in ten minutes) and lights up again.

He surprises her by bringing it up himself. “Wait, do you have anywhere to stay?”

Celty can only shake her head in answer. Shizuo says, “Ah, crap.” 

Then he says, “How do you feel about crashing on a couch?”

*

She walks home with Shizuo that evening, her horse rolling alongside of its own volition. She keeps one hand on the handlebars, just for show, until they pass into a quieter, residential part of Ikebukuro, and then allows it to do as it will. Shizuo doesn’t talk, and the silence between them is easy, just like when she keeps him company on the overpass late at night.

They come to the side of town where all the buildings look a little run-down, gutters rusted and ivy running along cracks in the concrete in more places than one. Shizuo’s apartment proves to be in a three-story building that looks even worse than the rest of the block, the downstairs windows behind bars and the numbers missing from most of the doors.

At the foot of the central stairwell Shizuo stops, and—suddenly awkward—speaks for the first time in the half an hour they’ve been walking. “Listen,” he says, and he doesn’t quite look at her, turns so that she can just barely see the corner of his eye behind the sunglasses. “I’m not exactly good for living with. Um . . . it might not be the sort of place you expect.”

`[I’m an ancient monster from the fairy realm]`, Celty types, faintly amused. `[I might not remember it, but I’ve probably seen worse.]`

He grins suddenly at that, his whole face lighting with the smile. Celty hasn’t yet stopped being surprised when he does that, breaking so totally away from his usual bland-to-thunderous expression. “I guess you have. Still, you know—sorry.”

`[It’s okay. Really.]`

She ties up her steed at the bottom of the stairs, locking it firmly to the handrail with a shadow as solid as steel, and follows Shizuo up to his apartment. It’s on the top floor, and she’s not surprised when the door Shizuo stops in front of is loose on its hinges, lock broken. “It was stuck,” Shizuo says by way of explanation. Celty just nods. 

The inside isn’t exactly a surprise, but something about seeing it versus imagining what Shizuo’s concerned about still leaves her—so to speak—momentarily speechless. She hadn’t thought about how Shizuo must live before now, and the sharp contrast between what she finds past the threshold versus the clean-edged sophistication of Shinra’s apartment makes all the more of an impression. The faucet over the kitchen sink is askew, dripping; one of the cupboards is missing a door (Celty spots it lying in the hallway, a crack running through the middle); the screen of the television in the room is smashed in. Duct tape holds together a window pane.

Shizuo sees her pause, and he says, unusually quiet, “If you’re not totally sure about this—I mean—this is probably a bad idea. You’ve got some savings, right? Maybe Tom can find you someone to room with instead. Shit, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

The thought of having to live with a complete stranger is repelling: twenty years of living with a creep, Celty has decided, has been more than enough. She slips her phone out of her sleeve immediately and tells him, `[I’m not worried.]`

It’s a true statement: Shizuo’s never once turned his anger in her direction or hurt her, and anyway, it’s not as though he could. She tells him that too, punching in, `[You can’t do anything that would really harm me anyway, remember?]`

“I guess,” says Shizuo uncertainly, and then: “Still, if you ever feel like I’m . . . if you’re ever unsure, just say the word. I’ll help you find a roommate, or front for you to rent your own place, whatever, okay? And just throw me out if I’m being an ass.”

`[OK]`, Celty types. Pauses, and taps over to the emoji keyboard to add a string of cheerful faces, hoping Shizuo will get the message. She isn’t scared; she’s happy to be here, whatever his house looks like, whatever his temper is like. Shizuo is her friend, Shizuo doesn’t lie to her (couldn’t do that even if he wanted to, either, he broadcasts every emotion the minute it strikes him), and she is not afraid. 

Shizuo snorts in response when he sees it. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll go get the spare sheets.”

*

Living with Shizuo proves easy, for all his concern. Both of them work nights more often than not, and with the TV broken Shizuo’s usually out when he’s not sleeping, anyway. Celty takes up the duty of buying the groceries in exchange for paying a lesser portion of the rent—she’s still picking up transporter work over the web, but as ever the work isn’t entirely steady—which results in Shizuo smashing a lot fewer displays at the store and eating less instant ramen, since when Celty does the shopping the food usually makes it back to the (mildly dented) fridge.

Shinra calls her incessantly after those first few days of stunned silence, until she finally blocks his number. All the messages are entreaties for her to “come home,” and she doesn’t bother to text him back to tell him what he still hasn’t figured out: that for her he’s no longer home.

It’s strange, she admits to herself, not to have Shinra to go to with questions about humanity and science, strange not to have him flitting around in her periphery any time she comes home. But there’s something freeing about that, too (finding the answers herself on the web, or asking Shizuo, who’s a straight forward as can be, including when the answer is “I don’t know”—none of Shinra’s dancing around his own ignorance). And it’s good, more than anything, not feeling like she’s tied here or like there’s always something she’s missing. Celty hadn’t realized until she tore away how constraining living with Shinra had been, nor how manipulative every word out of his mouth was.

She spends a lot of time thinking about love, still. Shinra’s father, worm that he is, had said something once about how he thought it was the defining human trait. She’d thought she loved Shinra, for a little while after he’d started making his roundabout confessions: not like humans loved their partners, maybe, but at least like Shinra said they loved family.

Then he’d lied to her out of love, lied to her about the one thing that mattered to her more than anything: and if that’s how humans love then she knows for certain she doesn’t want any of it, doesn’t feel anything like. 

She doesn’t talk to Shizuo about it, though they talk about lots of things when he’s home (aliens, the gang wars that Shizuo’s hardly noticed, the movies Celty catches snatches of on shopfront screens). She’d bared all her emotions to Shinra for years, and she’s not ready to do that again, even if this time there’s no chance at all that the person she’d be speaking to is laughing behind a mask of concern.

This time, she’s going to figure it all out for herself, no matter how long it takes. Finding her head is important, but this—building herself, figuring out her place outside of Shinra’s insulation—this is important, too: meeting the challenge of freedom head-on, feet firmly planted, and winning. 

*

She brings up her life with Shinra to Shizuo only once. 

The night it happens she wakes from a nightmare, starting into darkness at a cool gust of wind from the window. The dream is one she’s had before: in it she lies bound to a surgical table while Shinra’s father and then Shinra himself apply scalpels and worse, and in it Shinra isn’t a child, smiles horribly down at her from above and tells her he loves her.

Lying shuddering on the couch Celty wonders how she could ever have stayed with someone who did that to her, who let that happen and then let the elder Kishitani remain in her life. Wonders how Shinra’s sunny’s disposition and flimsy lies were enough to convince her that the very people who severed her from the fairy realm were her best bet for survival; stares at the ceiling and wonders, too, if it really helps when humans cry.

Eventually she gets up and climbs carefully out the window and onto the fire escape. If there’s one thing she misses about living with Shinra it’s the view from his balcony, all of Ikebukuro glittering below, but the fire escape that climbs the side of this battered apartment building like a black serpent suffices. From it Celty can see their street and a nearby freeway on a high rise, one of the city’s skyscrapers visible in the distance behind another towering complex. Looking out at the city makes her feel, paradoxically, more alive: even if she doesn’t belong here, even if this isn’t her realm, when she sees it like this she finds it easier to believe she’s a part of it.

She sits outside for a long time, arms wrapped around her knees, watching cars zip past on the motorcade. For once, she doesn’t want to join them: she’d had a long day, driven her steed hard, and she knows both of them need to pause, accept this brief stillness so throwing themselves headlong into speed stays distinct. 

Then the window clangs beside her, making her jolt, and Shizuo (all one hundred and ninety-five centimeters of him: he has to fold himself nearly in half to fit through) clambers out onto the fire escape to join her. “Hey,” he says, and flops unceremoniously down beside her, takes out his cigarettes and his lighter.

`[You startled me]`, Celty tells him, and, before he can ask, `[I couldn’t sleep.]`

“Me neither,” Shizuo admits. He lights his cigarette and takes a long drag, lets it back out like a dragon settling into slumber. (Celty doesn’t remember if dragons exist. If Shinra hadn’t lied to her, she thinks bitterly, maybe she would: maybe she’d have her head and she’d know, could tell Shizuo about great lizards that breathe fire and make the comparison in full.) “My brother called, and—well, never mind. What about you? Anything you wanna talk about?”

Briefly torn, Celty hesitates. The issue of Shinra feels too big to discuss, to put into small words on a screen, and anyway she doesn’t know that she wants it out in the world. But there’s something about sitting in a fire escape in a bad part of town shoulder-to-shoulder with the strongest man in the city that makes this feel safe, outside the usual rules: and in the end she types, 

`[I’ve been thinking about why I stayed with Shinra for so long. I was so stupid. I had a nightmare about him tonight. I used to tell him about all my nightmares and ask how I could have them without my head.]`

A pause, while Shizuo reads, and then she yanks the phone back to add more before he can open his mouth.

`[I never told him the ones about him. And he talked about my head and the science so casually even though he knew exactly where it was and could see how much I needed it.]` Again: `[I was so stupid.]` And finally, `[Please don’t try to kill him, though.]`

She realizes that Shizuo’s broken his cigarette between his fingers as he reads this last, and that’s he’s gritting his teeth. “Shinra,” he grits out, “is a piece of shit, and I hate that he did that to you and that he’s made you think any of it was your fault. You’re not stupid.”

If she had eyes Celty would stare at him, but she doesn’t, so for a long moment she just sits there and looks at the glow of her phone before it winks out. And it’s such a simple thing to say, Shizuo’s affirmation; but she feels unexpectedly lighter, the mental weight of the nightmare somehow eased, the bog it's left in her mind made just a little clearer.

Without warning she leans forward and hugs Shizuo, tight. He makes a noise of surprise but throws an arm around her shoulders in return, the tension of his anger unwinding. After a moment he says, this time with a note of humor amidst what’s probably still a serious offer, “You sure you don’t want me to kill him?”

Celty laughs—makes sure to turn over her phone and type in a happy emoji and a couple stars so he knows that’s what she’s doing, since of course all she really does when she laughs is shake—and then types, `[I saw on TV that sometimes people send dog waste to those they hate. Maybe you can help me do that instead.]`

Shizuo laughs at that, too, and promises that he will. 

*

(They do it. Celty finds a dog and does the dirty part, since her shadows mean she doesn’t have to touch it anyway, and Shizuo strolls over to Shinra’s apartment building, dumps the gift on his doorstep and rings the doorbell before bounding out of the hallway. The two of them hide in the stairwell and listen as Shinra opens the door and shrieks in horror.

Neither of them can stop laughing for upwards of fifteen minutes after that, Shizuo bent double and wheezing with it beside her. Celty hasn’t felt so good in years.)

*

Much later—after they fight the Slashers together and she watches Shizuo throw dozens of them across the park without gravely injuring anyone, after he protects Ikebukuro without thinking or thanks—Celty returns the favor. 

His brother calls, and lately Shizuo’s been more antsy about talking to Kasuka. She knows Shizuo loves his brother, for all that his Kasuka’s deadpan mentions of him in interviews are hardly glowing; but the past few weeks he’s been down every time Kasuka’s called. He hasn’t talked about it, to Celty or anyone, only smoked excessively and spent more time out on their fire escape, and she’s left him to it.

This time, though, he ends up in such a foul mood that he’s not even angry, only dour, and that evening Celty risks asking. While they sit at the kitchen counter watching the news on Celty’s laptop, Shizuo glumly eating takeout from Simon’s, she types, `[What’s wrong? Would it help to tell me?]`

Shizuo looks darkly at the screen of her phone for a long minute before he says, “It’s not a big deal. My brother’s just been talking to our mom, that’s all.”

Moms are entirely out of Celty’s experience. She’s never had one, after all, and after she was around Shinra never did either. Unsure of her footing, she takes a minute to put in, `[Do you not like your mother?]`

“More like she doesn’t like me,” Shizuo says, and then, with a sigh, “She hasn’t spoken to me since high school, actually. Apparently ever since Kasuka told her about what I’ve been up to she’s been telling him how disappointed she is in me when he calls, and he’s been passing it on to me. It smarts that she won’t even say it to my face, you know? She’s gotta put it all through him.”

At a loss, Celty types the only thing she can think of. `[I think what you do is awesome. Even I can’t fight like you do.]` She adds an emoji with little fighting fists, and then, thoughtfully, `[You’re important to Ikebukuro.]`

Reading over the edge of his bowl, Shizuo says, “You really think so?”

`[Of course. Don’t listen to your mom.]`

After moment, Shizuo bumps her shoulder with his, a small appreciation. “Thanks,” he says. “It’s nice to hear that.” And smiles, a little lopsidedly but no less genuine for it. 

Celty types a smiley face back, and there’s something good in this despite the struggle, about having someone share their problems with her when those problems aren’t _her._ She likes being able to support her friend; she likes being able to help without having to feel wretched for not wanting to offer romance. None of the awkwardness here that every conversation with Shinra had carried. 

They finish watching the program together, their conversation turning to lighter things (if aliens can be considered light, anyway; Celty thinks it’s deadly serious, especially given the interview the show hosts with an abductee half-way through). It feels like this is how things are meant to be, and Celty thinks that she’s very glad that she and Shizuo are friends.

*

Shinra shows up on the doorstep six months after she moves out.

It’s raining that day—just like it was when she left—and she opens the newly-fixed door to him and freezes. He smiles pathetically at her and holds out flowers, rainwater dripping from his overlong hair. “Hi, Celty.”

For an instant Celty feels a pang of guilt. Feels stupid and small all over again for leaving him, for hurting him like she did, for running away when he was begging for her to stay. It’s an awful, sour thing, starting at the pit of her stomach and making its way upwards: how could she do that to him, how could she be so cruel.

Then she thinks about what he did, and the last of the messages he’d sent her, insisting that she needed him to survive, and Shizuo saying, _you're not stupid:_ and the feeling is gone. All she feels instead is fury, and she types into her phone without looking. `[GET LOST.]`

Shinra’s expression is nearly identical to the one he’d worn when she’d told him she was leaving, surprise and confusion. Like he really expected her to welcome him in or want to see him again; like he really didn’t believe that his plan could fail. “Celty,” he babbles, “Celty, wait, we can talk about this—I’ve been wanting to talk to you for so long, please, just take these and let me talk, let me explain,” proffers his flowers.

Reflexive, Celty sends her shadows shooting out of her sleeve, seizes the flowers and flings them viciously away down the hall. `[We have nothing left to say to each other. There is a reason I did not take your calls]`, she writes, with surety, and makes to close the door. When Shinra goes to stick his foot in, she stomps it, and leaves the door only open enough to show him another message: `[I am better without you. Whatever you have for me, it isn’t love.]`

“I would never have done what I did if I didn’t love you!” Shinra cries, and he’s still trying to pull open the door but Celty’s shadows have rooted it in place. Standing on the other side, Celty thinks languidly: how stunning that he still doesn’t understand. How good that she does, and what a fool Shinra is if he thinks that anything in him is stronger than her, or that she’s interested in anything at all he has to say.

“Is it because of fucking Shizuo,” Shinra spits, when it becomes clear to him she’s not listening, “are you in love with that blood-thirsty maniac? That’s why you’re living with him, right, you left me for him so you can both be monsters—“

Celty yanks open the door and Shinra falls through, cut off mid-sentence and yelping. Without missing a beat she picks him up with her shadows until he’s dangling several feet above the floor, types angrily while he struggles and yells: 

`[Do not insult my friend. You are finished here.]`

Then she throws him down the stairs.

*

She doesn’t tell Shizuo that Shinra came to visit. There’s no reason to, after all: she’s no desire to chase after him, only to move on with her life, and having been able to stand and listen to Shinra’s entreaties and feel altogether at peace until he insulted her friend makes her feel stronger than she’s ever been. 

After she’s thrown Shinra out and made sure he’s gone she heads down and unlocks her bike. The rain is letting up once again, the whole of the world washed clean and every shrub amidst the concrete blooming with green. She likes seeing it this way; in Ireland it rains a lot, too, the rain the most common sound in the green countryside, and it's a good sort of familiar.

Her steed whinnies—revs—and they’re off, through the cool evening. This time there isn’t anything she needs to keep herself from thinking: this time she wants to laugh, proclaim herself queen of the mountain and drive until the whole world knows her name.

She has friends, Celty thinks as she speeds across an overpass and nears the center of Ikebukuro. She has a home (one she chose, this time: that matters) and a job that she’s good at, and the strength to keep going. She needs and she’s needed. She doesn’t have her head, but now she’s free to search for it without Shinra to halt her at every turn and she's got backup she can believe in. She has—for the moment—everything she requires, and for all that she’s no longer got someone to tell her they love her, well; she feels _loved,_ and might even be learning to do it herself. 

More than anything she feels unbound, her past with Shinra insufficient to shackle her, everything he’s done too small and weak in the face of _her._ She'd listened to his words, the words he'd used to bind her for years, and they had meant nothing: slid over her like water and vanished into the air. The unspoken fear that if she saw him again she'd capitulate all over again has been proven unfounded, all her bridges burned.

Ikebukuro rises around her. The sky opens above. The sun shines through at last, and as she throws herself into the arms of the city Celty lets go of the handlebars and throws wide her own.

 _You were not enough to hold me,_ she thinks, and dares to believe that one day soon she’ll be able to shout it, too.


End file.
